Activist Interviews Archives | Page 5 of 26

UK: “This is my culture man, this is my show”

December 15, 2015 By Correspondent

Tracey Wise, London, UK, SSH Blog Correspondent

Frank Turner, courtesy of his press agent

After the unfortunate harassment incident that led me to create Safe Gigs for Women, I was acutely aware that the band I had gone to see, Manic Street Preachers, would not have condoned such behaviour, so why did someone at one of their shows think this was appropriate?

With its focus on music, it makes perfect sense that Safe Gigs for Women should seek to work with bands and artists to get them on side. They have a ready-made platform to reach out to people, so having their support is essential.

In approaching artists to gain their support, Frank Turner seemed a natural choice. Known for his beliefs in libertarianism, egalitarianism and a passion for music that more than rivals my own, he very kindly offered his support and agreed to meet me to discuss this during his recent UK tour, at Nottingham’s Rock City. I also met his supporting artists Will Varley and Lorna Thomas from Skinny Lister. It seems like an odd time to be writing this blog, after the events in Paris, but these interviews were planned before the terrorist attack which left 89 people who had been at an Eagles of Death Metal gig, dead.

Safety at gigs seems a much wider notion right now. But in discussing whether Frank Turner believes artists have a responsibility towards the safety of their fans, his stance is that of having “a duty of care” towards those that have paid to see him. Indeed, Turner has been known to stop shows to confront unwanted behaviour by members of the crowd, and further states “of course, I don’t want people getting hurt at my shows”. Whilst he may be comfortable, at times to intervene, he is also thankful for the role of security at shows, proving, again, that achieving safer gigs at women will take a multi-faceted response.

As I acknowledged in my first blog for Stop Street Harassment, there have been notable cases of female artists being groped at shows. When I raised this with Turner, Varley and Thomas, Varley highlighted that, unfortunately, that there is a small “proportion of arseholes” at gigs. Thomas admitted to being recently groped whilst crowd surfing at a Skinny Lister show. In discussing this with Turner he acknowledges that he believes he was “naive”, having never realised that this happens, further stating his reaction to be “Really? Who would do that?” and being certain that no men he knows would ever act in such a way. And this is the crux of the matter – if Turner, my friends and myself are sure that the people we know are not behaving like this, then it is a small group of people making it difficult for women, emphasising the need for campaigns like this, and bands and artists to engage with gig goers to get them to think about their behaviour.

Since starting this project, some commentators have put it to me that women-only shows are the answer. I do not agree, for numerous reasons. I am not an economist, or schooled in the music business, but how would the cost of this impact on smaller, independent labels, venues and acts? As a consumer of music in my own right, as covered in my last blog, surely I have the right to attend the events I choose, with whomever I want to?

Furthermore, and most importantly, it automatically assumes the worst of men. As most of my friends are male, and as the aunt to a 5-year-old boy, this offends me as much as it upsets me. Discussing the notion of women only gigs, Frank Turner states he finds this “defeatist” and “sexist, it says men are beyond any redemption”. This was also shared by Will, stating that “segregation is not the answer”, and Lorna emphasising that what is really needed is a “mind shift”. Considering there are so many men out there doing good to support this project, such as the White Ribbon Project, the artists who supported our first fundraiser, including Jukebox Monkey and Peter Von Toy, and Frank Turner himself, women only gigs feels like a massive step backwards.

Recent world events have shown just how crucial music is in the world around us. And that is why the support of artists like Will Varley, Skinny Lister and Frank Turner is so important. Because, as Turner puts it, “what better forum is there to try and teach people not to be pricks?”

Born and raised in London, Tracey is a graduate of City University. She has spent the best part of her life at gigs and festivals and obsessing about music and created the “Safe Gigs for Women” project.

Nepal: Fuel Shortages Lead to Carpooling… and then to Harassment (Part 2)

November 28, 2015 By Correspondent

Smriti RDN Neupane, Nepal, SSH Blog Correspondent

In Part 1, I discussed how a fuel shortage in Nepal has led to an increase in carpooling. However, carpooling has not been free from harassment for girls and women, and so a few young women created a closed Facebook group called “Carpool Nepal (Women).” Part 2 is my interview with one of the women (who wants to be anonymous).

What do you mean by carpool or carpooling?

Simply, carpooling is ride-sharing. To elaborate, carpooling is a way of sharing rides by several participants to save on fuel and the cost. However, in Nepal’s context, most of the time, the owners have shared a ride out of generosity.

Ok, so what is Carpool Nepal (Women) – closed group and how does it work?

Carpool Nepal (Women) is a closed women’s group on Facebook for carpooling. We are a small group of individuals. We have also created a Facebook profile with the username “Carpoolers” to keep people updated personally and by best to our collective abilities.

The women in the group mention hashtags such as #Ask to ask and #Offer to offer rides to each other.

How do you want to be addressed as – administrators, initiators, campaigners, others?

We saw some people already sharing rides and many groups already being created to help one another through ride-sharing because people were starting to have problems getting rides due to shortage of fuel. So, we do not identify ourselves as being initiators. However, we started and administered the group Carpool Nepal (Women) which was made specifically for women.

Are the administrators of Carpool Nepal open group and women only group page same?

No, we are different. After 5-6 days of Carpool open group page started, we formed a women-only closed group. We requested the admins of open group to help by posting about the women’s group page so that women would be more secure and comfortable because clearly most of them weren’t. We did not receive any reply from the administration. However, we received a message from a woman saying that there is no need for our group. But we only wanted to feel safe while carpooling by asking and offering rides for and by women.

Some people also harshly said that there was no need to divide the group. Their logic was that creating a different “women’s only” group is like segregating the country on the basis of religion, caste and ethnicity, and that the creator and members of this “women’s only” group are the narrowest of minds. It was ironic because toilets are divided based on gender; dormitories are divided based on gender, but all that they saw were us being as one of the culprits. Despite seeing so many women being bullied and harassed on Facebook, all they saw was us dividing and somehow failed to see that specific segment of women that we were targeting to help.

Were there many instances of harassment?

Women who asked for offers were bombarded with harsh comments, were teased and made fun of. One time, one of the women expressed that she felt uncomfortable while receiving a ride with strange men and that was met with so many derogatory comments from many men and few women as well. Some (or most) men made outrageous comments and that made women feel harassed and bullied. Then women who asked and offered rides to women only were ridiculed as being discriminatory towards men.

Many women were skeptic of the rides because there were some posts stating that some women were harassed. Also, some men asked for rides with needing one, just for the excuse of riding with a woman on her scooter.

There were women who needed rides and some were willing to offer rides but were too uncomfortable to post on the Facebook page because they knew they would be attacked by dreadful, awkward, perverted and crazy comments.

Also, the purpose of the initial group was to post to ask and offer with respective hashtags. However, people used to post irrelevant posts, spam posts and jokes and a lot of selfies. So, the important posts used to pile below thus very few people were getting rides. We also wanted to make it clean, so we stuck to no other things being posted except asks and offers.

What has been the overall reaction from members and non-members?

Our group is clean as there are no irrelevant posts. However, the posts have been decreasing in number. Although many women were getting rides, the stacks of posts for asking and offering that the women made would pile below and it is inconvenient to search for posts on Facebook group. Another reason is that, people would get a lot of posts in there news feed, which may have forced them to turn off notification. This has happened in both the groups and happens in Facebook groups often.

We believe that it is because of just having it as a Facebook Group. A mobile app would have helped a lot of women in need. The negative feedback which we received, we have mentioned it. The good ones, the ones who have personally sent us a message to ask us for help have thanked us a lot and we feel as much thankful to them as well for giving us an overwhelming share of delight.

Though there are only 6K+ members, women were active, very comfortable and happier than in the other group.

Do you intend to continue the campaign and your page even after easy availability of fuel?

We will help the group as long as we can from our Facebook profile. We have also helped a few by personally finding rides for them. We thought of creating a mobile app specifically for women, however the cost and time constraints kept us away from doing it. Despite that, we want to keep on helping our women by whichever way we can and we have been as well to the best of our abilities and resources.

Smriti coordinated Safe cities campaign in Nepal with a team of feminist activists of various organisations, networks and community groups from 2011 to 2014 and is still voluntarily engaged with it. She is currently engaged in an action research and advocacy on women’s leadership in climate change adaptation focusing on women’s time use.

The Netherlands – Amsterdam: Haven of Sex, Drugs and Rrr…Catcalls?

September 24, 2015 By Correspondent

Eve Aronson, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, SSH Blog Correspondent

When people think about Amsterdam, what usually comes to mind is a fantastical world of marijuana, Red Light Districts and lots of gorgeous canals running through the city.

The Netherlands is not really an obvious place to look at street harassment. Ranked fourth in Europe by the European Institute for Gender Equality, and ranked 14^th in the world according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, the Netherlands at first glance appears to be doing fairly satisfactorily in terms of promoting gender equality.

But there’s also a lot of people here and, consequently, a lot of room for mischief. There’s over 4,000 people per square kilometer in Amsterdam to be precise, which is about twice the amount of people in the same amount of space in New York and London.

So many humans sharing so little space doesn’t only lead to horrendously clogged roads (and bike paths) during rush hour, but also inevitably to more catcalls, more groping and to more instances of harassment in these overcrowded public spaces.

In January and February, I conducted a detailed survey of people’s experiences with street harassment in this ‘great small city’.

In just two weeks, I received a flood of over 150 responses from women, men, LGBTQ-identified folks and people of color. What their experiences underlined was that street harassment was happening in Amsterdam and that people were itching to talk about it.

The three most popular types of harassment reported were ‘Greetings’ like Hey baby and Hi sexy, Hissing or Whistling and Sexual Comments. Below is a chart of all reported types of harassment by the survey respondents in Amsterdam:

Along with the types of harassment listed above, a significant number of people also reported experiencing non-verbal forms of harassment like leering, or smirking. One respondent described their harasser(s) as, “Looking at me with their eyes like they are already ripping my clothes off and raping me very violently. Looking at me like me fighting back would only turn them on more”.

What do these and other forms of street harassment do to those who experience it? What are the effects and long-term consequences, if any? To some survey respondents, the answer to these questions was that there were none, and described their experiences as ‘benign’ or ‘normal’.

Some respondents described their experiences as complimentary. Last year, New York Post writer Doree Lewark spoke to such interpretations, pointing to the euphoric nature of catcalls: “[W]hen a total stranger notices you, it’s validating…What’s so wrong about a ‘You are sexy!’ comment from any observant man?… For me, it’s nothing short of exhilarating, yielding an unmatched level of euphoria”.

But for many people in Amsterdam, what they experienced was far from euphoric. One respondent explained that she has been diagnosed with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) as a result of years of street harassment in Amsterdam, a recent encounter of which left her with a broken nose after she called her harassers out.

Below are two figures illustrating the extent of the effects of street harassment on the folks like the respondent above. The first shows 14 different effects that street harassment has had on people’s day-to-day lives in Amsterdam. The second gives a glimpse into some of the emotional effects that street harassment has on people who experience it:

Survey respondents used words like “suspecting”, “fearful”, “frustrated”, “depressed” and “angry” to describe how they felt after being harassed in the streets or on public transport in Amsterdam. The experiences of these respondents were far from euphoric—rather, they are red flags that what is understood as ‘harmless’ or ‘playful’ to some is in actuality having a huge impact on how people move through public spaces and interact with others.

In April, I launched a local Hollaback! chapter in Amsterdam to provide an outlet to folks who have experienced street harassment to post their stories, get resources and mobilize on-the-ground actions. A local partner, StraatIntimidatie, is also currently running an online petition, vying for a nationwide law against street harassment.

One story told and one signature at a time, street harassment is being named and fought here in Amsterdam and around the world. Next time, I’ll talk about some cool new ways that online and digital technologies are being brought into the fold to really shed light on the pervasiveness of street harassment in Amsterdam and beyond. I’ll also talk about some important challenges that come with using these newer forms of activism and how they risk perpetuating certain racial and ethnic stereotypes about who harasses, who is harassed and why. See you next month!

You can find the full analysis of the Amsterdam survey results here or by contacting Eve at evearonson@gmail.com. Follow Eve and Hollaback! Amsterdam on Twitter at @evearonson and @iHollaback_AMS and show your support by liking Hollaback! Amsterdam’s Facebook page here.

USA: Hey Baby! Unhinged

September 11, 2015 By Correspondent

Hannah Rose Johnson, Tucson, AZ, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

Hey Baby! Art Against Sexual Violence is an exhibition series that uses art as a vehicle and tool to end street harassment and sexual violence. After participating in this year’s shows, in April and May, I wanted to know more about this art movement. I wanted to know more about the people I passed in my office hallway, who I breezed by on 4^th Avenue, who were doing this work. I wanted to piece together a genealogy. So I sat down with Wendy Sampson, an organizer who originally brought Hey Baby! to Tucson, and Manuel Abril, a current Hey Baby! organizer (and SSH board member).

Hey Baby! Art Against Sexual Violence show 2015.

This is what I learned: (it’s not linear and it’s not a history).

Rewind to 2010. Hey Baby! was a copycat of an event that happened in North Carolina, which Sampson’s friend suggested they organize in Tucson. Sampson said, “The one in North Carolina was a one-time event and we just planned a one-time event as well. We were like oh, this was a good idea, we should do it here.”

Sampson presented a really interesting analysis on the relationship between street harassment and intimate partner violence. She said that complacency with a culture of street harassment infiltrates our relationships with each other. That if we are willing to treat one another like shit on the street, we are willing to behave like that in intimate settings. But she also said people can more easily rally around street harassment; that “people have a tangible reaction [to street harassment] and are steady in that reaction than intimate partner violence, which is messier and complicated and drains you in a different way.”

Putting on Hey Baby! provided a break amidst the emotional exhaustion of the intimate partner violence work that she was doing. Sampson said, “I remember being excited about the art we had. I remember feeling that ANGER, that can get drown out through exhaustion, and to share it with other people was really rejuvenating.”

No one knew that it would get taken up again by other activists or be institutionally grant funded for a while, and eventually come out again on its own, unhinged. After Wendy organized the event she left Arizona. For four years. She admitted that she didn’t remember much about the actual event because she was so exhausted from the accountability processes. Though she did say, “I remember putting art up…I remember someone doing poetry…there was a lot of art being laid out and a lot of things people could take home, like posters…”

2014 Hey Baby art in Tucson (Abril is two in from the left)

I asked Abril to fill in the gaps. What he said about the ebb and flow of transitions actually isn’t the most relevant. We’re talking about a genealogy here, a series of connections that produces something that may mean something else depending on the timing and environment. And Hey Baby! got taken up with organizers, non-profits, and sexual violence prevention educators at different times and places.

What he did say that I thought was interesting was about the show this year: “We wanted to recapture the feeling of connecting with a kind of playfulness where we didn’t feel suffocated by everything that could go wrong.” The kind of wrong that comes from building a complex analysis that isn’t easily palatable.

Messiness.

Abril said that before inviting people to participate this year, “We told ourselves that we are going to f**k up and that’s going to be a part of our process…we wanted stuff that was messy and that didn’t have a predictable outcome in terms of how people were going to receive it…. And a lot of came from that…[artists and organizers] felt relieved not having to tell people what we already knew. Like depart from the place where we know rape culture exists, and pull in the other things, conditions that we live in that are socially or institutionally imposed. And try to make connections to those.”

Organizing against street-harassment is complex because when we examine the conditions of sexual violence we enter a multi-dimensional zone. Hey Baby! Art Against Sexual Violence brought together art as resistance, art as distance, and as a creative strategizing tool. We wrote, painted, collaged, sculpted and performed new narratives that exposed the intricacies from where sexual violence departs from and seeps into. Pieces that examined street harassment, catcalling, rape, date-rape, partner violence, state-violence, mental illness, incarceration, abuse within activist communities, victim-blaming, and challenging perfect-victim narratives.

After talking with Sampson and Abril, I had more questions. Curiosities about anti-street harassment movements, art as activism, and where are these people in North Carolina who organized the first event? [Editor’s note: My 2010 book on street harassment features the North Carolina event!]

I had some more tracking down to do.

For more information about Hey Baby! Check out www.facebook.com/HeyBaby.Art or www.heybabyart.tumblr.com

Hannah Rose is writing from Tucson, Arizona and Lewiston, Maine (US) as she transitions from the Southwest to the Northeast for a career in sexual violence prevention and advocacy at the college level. You can check her out on the collaborative artistic poetic sound project HotBox Utopia.

UK: An interview with Bryony Beynon of Hollaback! London

August 10, 2015 By Correspondent

Ruth Mair, UK, SSH Blog Correspondent

When it comes to street harassment, the use of the word “street” is seen kind of as a catch-all. Anyone who has observed harassment, or experienced it knows that the street is just one of the many spheres of public space where it can occur, and since so many spaces are so very different, there must be different approaches to combating harassment that are tailored (as much as possible anyway) to the space they are hoping to make safe and fully public.

There are a variety of ongoing projects in different cities across the world to combat the harassment of women, LGBTQ people, and any vulnerable individuals who are likely to have encountered that kind of treatment. This week I spoke to Bryony Beynon of Hollaback! London, who has been independently advising Project Guardian, British Transport Police’s (BTP) and Transport for London’s (TFL) initiative to tackle unwanted sexual behaviour on public transport, on the progress that has been made, and the work that still needs to be done.

“It’s been a really interesting journey,” Beynon told me, “although it has been slightly disappointing to see how TFL – less so BTP – are so reticent to put out a message that this kind of violence is happening across their network.”

The “Report it, Stop it” video and Tumblr Beynon calls “quite brilliant” and I am inclined to agree. TFL and BTP have clearly learned a lot from the advice and support of people like Beynon through Hollaback! London, as well as consulting with the Everyday Sexism Project and End Violence against Women Coalition. However as Beynon and I spoke it became clear that there are certain barriers still preventing a more thorough and widespread campaign.

“The ‘Report it, Stop it’ video got over 1 million views, and TFL were really pleased with that. But given that 24 million journeys are made on their network every day, wouldn’t a poster reach more people?”

Beynon explained to me that, since the video was up on YouTube as targeted advertising, there was a limit to which audiences it could reach- targeting 18-30 year old women depending on what other videos they were watching obviously excludes a significant proportion of the population that might experience harassment on street harassment, and although Beynon is the first to acknowledge that she is an activist, not a communications person, this does appear to be an unintentionally blinkered response on the part of TFL, to the issue of sexual harassment on public transport. Bearing in mind also that on TFL’s own pages concerning “Safety tips for using public transport” and “Information on reporting a crime” there is no reference to sexual harassment, or to the BTP text number (61016) specifically created for the reporting of such crimes, although there are plenty of references to taking extra care not to trip down escalators when drunk.

“It’s a really simple message,” says Beynon, but there is a clear reluctance to put such information on posters in case they scare people. However this seems to be a reflection of the perpetuation of the view that a sexual harasser is still “a shadowy man in a mac.”

“The video was great because the guy who was harassing the woman in it was in a suit, and clearly looked like a commuter. That much more accurately matches the profile of harassers from stories that we (Hollaback London) collect.” But there seems to be a block on acknowledging that sexual assault on the TFL network is no different to attacks on members of staff (some of whom happen to also be women) that TFL have also run brilliant campaigns to help prevent.

“There seems to be this idea that posters about unwanted sexual behaviour won’t work because the only people doing it (the harassing) are people who are somehow pre-programmed to do it anyway. It’s stuck in that mode, rather than realising that it’s about power and wanting to control someone else.”

However, as Beynon points out, there are many other projects similar to this that have been highly successful, and reflect a much broader approach to communicating the extent of the issue, as well as the solutions to it. In New York City, the NYPD are working with the MTA, and have messages in subway stations and on trains stating that “A crowded train is no excuse for an improper touch” along with posters and a website with a reporting tool that has been live since October 2014. In Washington, DC, SSH and Collective Action for Safe Spaces have worked with the transit authority since 2012 and their second wave of posters was up this spring saying, “If it’s unwanted, it’s harassment.”

Similarly in Boston, MA, the MBTA launched an app called “See Say” in 2012, allowing passengers to report “suspicious” behaviours- including harassment. In the UK, Nottingham’s public transit is launching an initiative called Project Regard, based on the Project Guardian model of the BTP, but have already had posters on their buses concerning unwanted sexual behaviour for quite some time. Clearly such projects can be successful, in a variety of different contexts.

However, as Beynon and I agree, sometimes that “extra push” outside of all the other messages that women receive constantly telling them that such harassment is the norm, and that they are expected to get on with their day and ignore it, could be quite significant, even to those of us who are engaging frequently with activism relating to street harassment. For all of those who are less engaged, the extra information from posters, stating repeatedly that we do not have to just accept or ignore such harassment, could be absolutely integral to their feeling safe on public transport. But hopefully this will be the next step of TFL in their campaign. This is a long term project, and affecting behavioural change is the only way to really improve the situation. TFL have made progress, with significant support and input of groups like Hollaback, Everyday Sexism, and others, but there is still a long way to go before their campaign will be on the level of more extensive ones like New York’s MTA.

If you would like to support Hollaback! London, there is due to be a call out for volunteers at some point in the next few months. Sharing stories and testimony is really important for Hollaback’s campaigns, so if you have any stories relating to harassment on public transport, or if any of this information regarding reporting is new to you and you would have liked to have seen it on posters on the TFL network then you can share your stories here.

Ruth is a human rights MA student finishing her MA dissertation on the legal and normative rights of terror suspects in the UK (spoiler alert: rights are being violated). She also plays bass in a band called Kinshot, sews as often as she can, and spends time getting annoyed at the cat sleeping on top of her computer.

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